THE ILLUSIONIST

dMYD DVD

Starring The Pioneering Spirit of Jacques Tati

Trailer

Y

No, not another entry in Edward Norton’s impressive adventure in career decapitation. It’s a different film entirely…. (This isn’t fancy literary speak. It’s not the film starring Edward Norton. Honestly.)

Rescuing old scripts from the lurching sepia hell of the past should be a more widely accepted form of ratcheting up celluloid gold: though not strictly new or fresh, they’re still original and unseen, unlike the 98% of remakes, rehashes and rewanks currently populating the DVD isles. (This isn’t even willfully hilarious exaggeration.) The Illusionist rips some tatty (JOKES) paper from the corpse of French comedian extraordinaire Jacques Tati (SEE, JOKES) and proceeds to rub loveable Gallic animation all over it, resulting in a… loveable Gallic animation. Minute details of human existence are lovingly rendered in watercolour swathes from the boiling of a kettle to removing ones shoes, whilst the care and attention chucked over the production leads to moments of genuine pathos and the greatest rabbit ever drawn in a glorified flip-book. Brilliantly devoid of dialogue throughout, the characterization relies on movement, expression and talent, whilst the settings of 50s Edinburgh provides wonderfully twee vistas of a lost world of decency. Behind the trappings of intimate beauty sits a sad tale of the death of innocent entertainment, the illusionist himself serving as a beacon of simplicity in a culture searching for something more; the repetition of routines combined with the accepting look on his face throughout the film gives a sense of satisfaction to a lost art that’s missing from the myriad hyper-speed extravaganzas at work elsewhere in the cinema-space. A minor triumph that no one will see, it’s worth watching for the greatest final-frame twist in cinematic history alone. Bring a tear-sucker…